Single crystal films are necessary for manufacturing commercially useful semiconductor devices, such as computer chips (CMOS transistors), solar cells, light emitting diodes (LEDs), and solid-state lasers. Silicon-Germanium (SiGe) possesses a large speed advantage over pure Silicon (Si), but is costly and difficult to produce by itself as a whole wafer for semiconductor device manufacturing. Since only the top approximately 200 nm to 300 nm thickness of epitaxial layer on a wafer are used in modern semiconductor chip manufacturing, an alternative to using pure Si exists. The alternative is to deposit a thin film of SiGe onto a less expensive substrate, such as a sapphire (Al2O3) substrate. Thin film deposition of SiGe on sapphire has been done successfully in the past with high temperatures (i.e., temperatures above 850° C.), long thermal load times, and long soak times of the substrate at a high temperature (i.e., temperatures above 850° C.), as well as the additional requirement of providing a pure Si layer to act as an intermediary anchoring element between the trigonal sapphire (Al2O3) crystal structure and the diamond cubic SiGe. While effective, these conventional high temperature (i.e., temperatures above 850° C.) methods for deposition of SiGe on sapphire are unusable for practical commercial mass production. These conventional high temperature (i.e., temperatures above 850° C.) methods also stress the production equipment extensively by high and long thermal loading and soaking requirements. Temperature ramp-up times to above 850° C. are very long for conventional high temperature (i.e., temperatures above 850° C.) methods because of the transparency of sapphire substrate, the thermal equilibrium of substrate takes a long time to establish until the temperatures of the substrate and the surrounding reach an equilibrium level, and the cool-down time to settle at SiGe growth temperatures adds to the production time.